MT-ferrule compatible passive optical coupling for single-mode polymer waveguide in co-packaged optics

Abstract

In high performance computer systems and large-scale data centers, data movement becomes a critical problem. To overcome this problem, co-packaged optics are attracted much attention. For high performance large-scale integration (LSI) packages with the co-packaged optics, we have studied an optical and electrical hybrid package substrate. The hybrid package substrate is an organic package substrate with single-mode polymer waveguides. For the hybrid package substrate, we proposed a low-cost MT-ferrule-compatible optical connector and demonstrated its sub-micron passive assembling to connect the polymer waveguides and a single-mode fiber array. In this work, the assembled connector was glued to the substrate with a UV curing adhesive, and then, passive optical coupling between the polymer waveguides and the MT fiber connector was demonstrated. The 12 polymer waveguides including 4 dummy patterns were buttcoupled with the standard MT fiber connector and optical coupling for all polymer waveguides was achieved. The coupling loss penalty compared with active alignment was ~3 dB.